


Infallible Creatures

by namio



Category: Tales of Zestiria
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Family Feels, Gen, Michael's Shepherd journey, Platonic Centric, Pre-Canon, TODAY'S UPDATE IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY TOZX EP 13, im just saying that this is a long ass fic about michael from yours truly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-14 06:26:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9165940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/namio/pseuds/namio
Summary: The thing about veneration, Michael muses, is that it makes gods out of men, apathy out of faith, and demons out of gods.(In which the path of the Shepherd is a lonely one, even with the company of demons and ghosts.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It never starts off easy.

He’s been a Shepherd for roughly two week, and he feels a lot like Lailah is taking the wheel. Which is just fine with him, honestly—after the mess in Ladylake, he feels like he’s regressed back four years straight into the uncertainties of being a newly made orphan. There are no steps, just missteps. When he feels her eyes at the back of his head, he knows that he’s made a mistake. It’s—it’s a bit much, the anxiety, but for the first time in years, Michael feels actual hope. For the rest of his life, mostly, but also for Muse, who sees and believes in the seraphim, too, and for some of the world. Michael isn’t sure he’s good enough to hope that this can bring salvation to all of Glenwood—but he’s willing to try.

Lailah had led him out of Ladylake almost immediately. After passing out on the Vivia Aqueduct entrance and waking up five days later, she was almost shadowed with worry as she helped him up—“I don’t know what they might do when they hear that you got out, Michael. Please, let’s leave for now.” And out of instinct he followed that, too—a kind family had been the one who took him in, despite the state of his being, and though he didn’t have any money to repay them, they had been generous enough to simply wave his apologies and tell him to go and stay safe, before any of the guards realize anything. The Lady of the Lake— hands clasped in front of her chest and lips brimming with an anxious smile—brushed back some of his bangs and told him that she believed that he might grow to be a good Shepherd.

He only nodded. He only knows the legend of the Shepherd, and he doesn’t exactly know what they actually do. Before this all, he would’ve imagined them to be heroic and good and kind. Now that he is officially the Shepherd, he’s sort of scared of falling short.

What sort of things will he face, that he’d have to be heroic?

Lailah told him about hellions, and Michael had managed to purify some, with Lailah’s guidance. He had never really held a weapon, before, much less use one, but they made it work, so far. It literally was simply a wooden staff, taken from a broken drying pole. Lailah’s amazing with her paper slips. It’s always been easy to be fascinated by fire—Michael read somewhere that apparently, if there is one thing that led mankind into the age of flourish, it was the understanding that fire is the kindling of life. It’s easy to see that when she purifies malevolence in a glimmer of spark, ethereal as it flickers in a thousand blinks of light. They walk back to his village, tracing the gentle curve of a stream and around the trees of the forest, steadily crawling away from the heart of Hyland.

She makes the campfires. Michael cooks, whenever he actually got to sit down and string together a makeshift trap. There are only so many games, here, but he takes what he can get. Most of the time, though, he just forages. Lailah still looks graceful as she eats fruits and berries. Most of the time, she looks like she wants to reach forward and wipe his mouth.

“Sorry,” he says between bites, slowing down as his cheeks assume a pale imitation of the wildberries he is eating. She laughs and points at a spot on her cheek, and he mirrors her to wipe away a stray drop of juice.

“You’re a growing boy,” she says. “You should sleep early, too. It’ll be a long day tomorrow.”

He does what he’s told. He supposes, the start of being a good Shepherd is not to disappoint your Prime Lord.

The next day, he finally meets his first human hellion.

“Lailah,” he calls out, and her warm hand is on his left shoulder, reassuring. “Is this—?”

“A human who became a hellion, yes,” she says. It’s hard not to hear the faltering in her voice, and he turns to look at her. Her expression turns serious again, though, and she nods at him. “You don’t have to purify her if you’re not ready. We shouldn’t push you when you’re not ready.”

But he sees a wolf, mostly, and it—no, she—looks frozen in place as she sees him, he thinks it’s probably his duty to _try_ , at the very least. If anything, _he_ wouldn’t want to be saddled with malevolence. Humans generate malevolence, but it doesn't always mean they want to—and Michael definitely would rather be purified.

“I want to give it a try,” he tells her, and rushes forward. Lailah’s words die out as a surprised noise, and then turns to clicks of heels on the ground.

The wolf hellion immediately swerves aside and let out a guttural growl, eyes flashing red. Michael stops and spins around, right as she leaps forward with jaws open, and he swings his staff and—

ILEFTHIMBEHINDTODIEIKILLEDHIMSERAPHIMKIL **LM** EIKILLED **MY** LI _TTL_ EBROTHERNOWHES _GO_ _NE_ _EVE_ RYONE **AREG** ** _OIN_** GTO—

He's on the ground. Why is he on the ground? Something is caging him and he sees that it's those fire eyes, bloodshot with guilt, and her words froth—

“Free me,” she says, and her hands dig painfully into his shoulders, and, “I can't do this it hurts please I'm so terrified of myself I'm so sorry please just—”

And there's that insistent press of malevolence against his belly, as raw and human as desperation itself, and he's writhing and kicking and she's crying, crying on him, crying something red and crying something about her brother—

“Michael!”

A flash of fire, and the wolf girl is sobbing as she stumbles back to the forest, inhumane hiccups echoing in the empty spaces. Michael can still feel the almost beastly breath and saliva against the skin of his neck. His shoulders probably bruise. He feels empty to the stomach, somehow. Lailah kneels beside him and palms his cheek with one gentle hand and he feels a soft warmth suffused into his body, but somehow it passes over his chest and his belly and he feels better somewhat, but still far emptier than before. It's like the girl took something from him and slotted in her guilt in its place, and it's a sloppy, messy job with half of what used to be just in glops around him. He breathes out. Air feels empty.

“Humans who turn into hellions have baggages other hellions don't,” Lailah murmurs, other hand helping him stay up. “And a Shepherd, they—it's not as simple, with humans.”

Michael presses one hand flat on his stomach. “She wanted me to have her guilt.”

Lailah only brushes back his bangs, saying nothing in reply.

He flops right back to the ground, staring at the sky. They’ve only been walking for half a day and the sky is still bright, but he feels so, very tired. Michael wonders how long he’ll remember those bloodshot eyes.

“We can rest for the day,” Lailah says, soft as a comfort. He must look weird, lying in the middle of a dirt road, a pole in his hand, but he can’t even laugh at that mental image. He can feel Lailah’s worry in waves and he knows he should get up, but he can’t. “The first human hellion… it always hurts. Please don’t blame yourself, Michael. You’re still very young; it’s okay to not be able to purify them the first time around.”

The sky is bright.

“Please, let’s just rest for the rest of the day. Can you get up?”

They end up setting up camp early, though in the end, Lailah did almost all of it. She gathers and lit up the campfire and finds him some fruits and vegetables, cleans the former and cooks the latter for him. Parts of him feel pangs of guilt that she’s made to look after him as though he’s a child of five again, but the rest of him can’t really move—he feels kind of wilted, like something that’s been holding him up has snapped and left him just a sack of… things.

Night falls, and with it, the rest of his spirits.

The forest is not a quiet place at night, unlike what the books all say. There are more chaos here than the bustle of Ladylake, with insects stirring up a storm of sounds-- Michael’s used to them, after all this time, but now it feels like an itch, like something inside of his chest that he can’t scratch. He’s lost something he can’t replace. He just doesn’t know what.

“Does it always hurt this bad, Lailah?” Even his voice feels like dirt as it listlessly stumbles out, clumping like tired mud on the forest floor. Lailah looks up from her lap and sighs.

“...Yes.”

Michael exhales. “Thanks for being honest with me.”

It hurts, but not in a too terrible way. It’s like when they told him Dad is dead. It’s like when they told him Mother wasn’t going to leave the room with his new little sister in hand, but wrapped up in fabric instead. It _hurts_ , but at least he’s not—he’s not stumbling around with like, hope, and then have it be fostered until it grows into a little sapling and have leaves peeking out only for it to be stomped until it’s just a hundred little pieces. It’s kind of like that. He still feels kind of empty, though.

“To purify humans, you have to have a reason to want to purify them that is stronger than their malevolence,” Lailah says, voice as gentle as the warmth of the flames. “But you’re young, Michael. You don’t have to find your answer now.”

Lailah gets up, graceful as the shadows of the forest, and sits down next to him. She’s warm in ways fire could never hope to be, and suddenly, he wants a hug—it’s been so long since he’s seen Muse, and she’s the only one he can ask those from, because she’s too young to really make fun of him or something. She never really understands why he asks them, other than that he had a bad day, but that’s somewhat better, too, compared to the alternative. She doesn’t really need to know the weight weighing down their family friends has on him, and she especially doesn’t need to know the weight of… this. She’s too young for that.

“What should I do, then?”

An arm wraps around his shoulders, and Michael throws himself into it. Her ornaments dig against his clavicle and he’s probably being too needy and this is his _first human hellion_ but just, just—her other arm pulls him close and his cheek is on her shoulder, and she’s rubbing his back, pressing her fingers against the tense lines of his shoulderblades. He wants to say it—he wants to say things like, _I’m twelve, why am I doing this?_ but also he’s here because she saved him, and she doesn’t deserve that. He’s twelve. He can handle this. He’s old enough to go on a trade trip. He’s old enough to do this.

“We go back to your village first,” she murmurs against his hair as she strokes it. “We talk out this entire Shepherd business with your adoptive family. Then, we do what you want, or travel the world. Does that sound good?”

He nods to the fabric of her clothes. “Mm. Okay.”

The wolf girl left behind her brother when they were running away from what she thought were wolves. Her brother is dead, now.

He tries not to think about Muse. Lailah is warm and reassuring, and she strokes his hair long into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i scream about michael daily on twitter at @ghostofcrux  
> Honestly I had no plans to post this or my numerous michfics but hey I mean who else will


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Home.

They finally get back to Celliwig two weeks later, legs sore and ready to give in.

Celliwig is a small village near the border between Hyland and Rolance, and it’s one tucked into the wilderness so thoroughly that it’s not even weird that sometimes it doesn’t matter if it’s Rolance or Hyland they’re in—either governments don’t really do much to exert their control over them, and they usually can just walk through and back whenever they need to trade with the village over the border. Lately it’s sort of hard to get to Hyland, though—border disputes, the guard tells him, the resident of a village on the border that never really got brought up when talking about border disputes. At least that left them in peace, he supposes. Better forgotten than warred over.

When he stumbles into the premises, everyone looks up.

“Michael! You’re still alive!”

“Oh thank Maotelus, we thought you were dead—”

“—Brother!” And then there’s that patter of feet, and Michael’s eyes feel like they’re five times lighter as he looks up and Muse is running towards him, a stalk of lemongrass in her hand. “You’re back!”

Michael drops to his knees as she hugs him, and he hugs her back, forehead against her stomach. “Yeah. Sorry, I walked.”

Walked is a very innocent way to put it, but he supposes that that is the point. Lailah leaves him and manifests behind him and Muse gasps, letting her grip on his hair go.

“Oh! A lady seraph! Hello, I’m Muse. Were you the one who got Micha home? Thank you very much.”

She takes a step back and brushes her skirt clean, and Lailah giggles. “Such a polite young lady! My name is Lailah, and I’m a fire seraph.”

“Thank you then, Lailah.” Muse does a bit of a bow with one hand gripping her skirt, and huh, where did she learn that? Then she takes a look at him with raised eyebrows and pokes his shoulder with the lemongrass. “Were you lost, Micha? I told you going that far will do that. Good thing Lailah was there, you know, because you probably won’t go tell someone that you’re lost and then you’ll just grow old in Ladylake and be a grilled fish merchant, I bet.”

Michael can’t help but laugh—it sounds a bit helpless, but he can’t help it. “Yeah, me too. I wouldn’t want to be a grilled fish merchant.”

He no longer wants to be the Shepherd now either, but he will see this through anyway—Lailah didn’t save him from the aqueduct dungeon for nothing, after all. They’ve been talking about what to do after he returns to Celliwig, like how they’re going to talk to Valory and Eidhan and eventually Muse. Michael had taken to mulling over the former the entire trip; he’s trying not to think about how he’s going to explain to Muse that he’s going to do something not unlike what Dad did before he died.

He hopes she won’t hate him.

“Michael, good Maotelus, you’re alive, oh seraph—” and Michael looks up to see Eidhan dropping to his knees in front of him, looking ready to cry. “I asked the guards if they’ve seen you, and most of them said they didn’t. There were several who said that you already left with some merchant cart and I thought you’d be back here but—three weeks, Michael. Three weeks. What would your father say, good seraph.”

Michael looks up to Lailah and she shakes her head, an unspoken _we’ll talk about it later when Muse isn’t here_ , and he turns back to Eidhan. “Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t end up on a merchant cart, but I didn’t know if I could find you either, so I went back after it was clear that I wasn’t going to be able to find you in the crowds. They went on for days…”

“And so you walked,” Muse says, amused. “You’re stupid sometimes, Micha.”

“Muse!” Eidhan says, tapping her cheek. “Don’t call your brother stupid.”

“Whatever,” Michael grumbles, letting go of his hug and getting back to his feet. His knees throb and his limbs suddenly surge with fire as he tries, but Eidhan pulls him up and keeps him steady, and it takes a minute but he can stand again alone, now, though his entire body is shaking. Now that he’s back, he feels like he can sleep another five days—he’s got more bruises than he does whenever Muse gets nightmares, because they share a bed and she’s a restless sleeper and she kicks his back a lot. Lailah’s hand is on his back, next to Eidhan’s, and together they push him forward back home, and Michael can only stumble forward like a newborn calf, Muse leading the way with that lemongrass of hers.  

She’s kinda right, honestly. He’s stupid. That’s how he got into this mess.

But sometimes, he can kind of hope that things will turn out fine.

They get back, and Valory feeds him, and he’s pretty sure he’s going to throw up if he’s told to finish his plate, no matter how starving he is. Lailah nestles inside him during the meal, because Valory and Eidhan are there and asking questions and he’s skirting around each of them, because Muse sometimes barges in and out and comes back with things related to her errands. He can’t finish more than the potatoes and bits of chicken—his stomach is too used to the sparse meals during their month on the road, though he eats as much as he physically could. He can feel his arms going limp, after it all. There’s still three fourth of the meat when he’s done.

“What happened, Michael?” Valory asks at last, tapping her ladle on the rim of the metal pot she’s cooking roots for tomorrow’s meals, probably. “You can’t… do _that_ and not tell us.”

He fiddles with his fingers, staring at them and the new stains on the tablecloth and the scratches on the wood. They’ve long been scabbed and lined with dirt underneath his nails, but fighting and things added new marks, pinkish red even after all this time. There was a surprising amount of hellions even out of the way of the main path—no wonder seraphim feel so threatened. “I… can we talk about it when Muse is already asleep?”

They’re both frowning, he can tell. He doesn’t even have to look up to know.

“Michael, what happened?”

Michael pushes the slice of chicken around, saying nothing. “I went to the Sanctuary. There was this… seraph, and I talked to her.”

Eidhan lets out a long sigh. “Michael, you’ve had this conversation before.”

There’s a warm tingle and with a gentle glow Lailah leaves him, manifesting right beside his chair. Her hands are in front of her, all professional and businesslike, but it’s hard to see her expression from down here. Michael hates to admit it, but he’s not exactly tall.

“I know,” he murmurs. “I know.”

His late father told him not to take his gifts for granted, but also not to be too… free with it. There were, are, very few seraphim around, and not all of the ones he met in his father’s trade travels were nice, but some were, and well, they looked lonely, usually. Or angry. In any case, regardless, Father wanted him to be careful about where he was when talking to the seraphim—namely, anywhere outside the public eye is fine. But well, the Sanctuary wasn’t getting emptier considering the festival, and the Lady of the Lake looked ready to be swallowed by malevolence, and…

“We don’t do this because we don’t like you, Michael,” Valory says. “We do this because we care. Though now I guess there’s nothing much to do about it by now.”

“I’m the Shepherd now,” he blurts out. “Lailah she’s—she’s my Prime Lord. She saved me, but I had to. I had to make a Shepherd pact. But it’s okay. I just. I’m the Shepherd, and I.”

Have to leave Celliwig, probably. After there being no Shepherd in so long, or so said Lailah, the world is in desperate need for one; Michael can guess, he supposes, from all those stories they’ve had about what happens at that ruined temple at Aifread’s Hunting Grounds. He’s never been there himself, but he doesn’t know if he wants to. Now he probably has to, though. Sounds like a place with a lot of malevolence.

“Michael,” Eidhan sighs. “Don’t be stupid. You’re young—whatever the Shepherd does, you’re too young to do it. And that means you probably will have to go around the world, leave your home—what would Muse say?”

Eyes widening, he turns to Eidhan. “I—but, but. I. I…”

It was hard enough to even want to leave home like this, and then… Must he really—must they really… Yes, what would Muse say? But at the same time, he’d promised. This isn’t a small promise, and he knows objectively that it’s what he should do, maybe, sort of, but to hear this, to know that in the eyes of others he shouldn’t, it’s. He’s confused. He doesn’t know what to take, in this case, because Lailah’s here too and she’s hearing all this, listening to all of this, and.

“They care for you,” Lailah says, hours later, when he’s back in his room and the sun is setting outside, all yellow and orange through the dingy window pane. He’s sitting on the bed—he wonders if Muse has been sleeping alone these past three weeks. Or maybe not. With a free bed, the others might’ve wanted that extra free space and sleep here instead of the equally crowded other bedroom—at least Muse is smaller than Ilesa, who’s youngest and eleven and lanky. He wonders if they don’t mind her kicks. Sometimes she gets bad dreams, though she rarely remembers it and often shrugs it off moments later, and whenever that happens she’s restless. Whenever he feels particularly patient at midnight after being woken up with a sharp kick to the thigh, he doesn’t restrain her with a hug.

“I know,” Michael sighs. “I just… I don’t know, Lailah. It’s probably most right to go regardless, I guess.”

“Family is important, Michael.” Lailah takes a seat beside him, not minding the fact that she has to bend her knees quite a bit because the bed is low and the room is too small for her extended legs. “I’m not angry or anything. What’s important is that outside of pressures like these, what do you think you should do?”

“I don’t know.”

Why must decisions be this hard? If he leaves, then who’ll be there for Muse? They have Valory and Eidhan and Ilesa and Minea and Dales, but… It’s different, isn’t it? To him it had always been different, in a way—then again, he actually travelled with Father, back when he was. Alive. Muse—Muse grew up with them, he supposes. In her infant years. They’re probably just as family as he is.

“I don’t know…”

“Micha?” As the door creaks open Muse’s head pokes in, and she perks up at seeing him. “Oh, there you are. You really must be tired, huh?”

And with that she enters and closes the door, practically skipping to the bed before taking up the spaces unoccupied—not much, since he’s sitting and Lailah’s sitting and this bed barely fits him and Muse, probably won’t at all once they get older—and leaning against him. Michael leans back against her, too, just a bit; he missed her, and at least she misses him, too. Her arms are around his waist, tight. Lailah politely says nothing as he strokes Muse’s hair, smoothing out the tangles that formed. Her hair is pretty short, but sometimes, when they wake up early enough, she’d make him braid it; it doesn’t get past two or three plaits, but it keeps her hair neat, and she looks a bit less Musetta and more Muse that way.

“Kinda am, yeah,” he says. “Glad to be back again, though. W’re you, Musetta?”

Muse buries her face against the back of his shirt, rubbing her cheek against the fabric. “…Thanks, Lailah.”

Their positions are awkward and his arm is hurting from the strain of reaching back and his waist is locked in a weird position, but he can’t do anything. He doesn’t want to, anyway, because he doesn’t want this moment to ever break.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This section is supposed to be longer but it would like, double the length, and I really should be 1) writing something else and 2) studying. Gotta ride the Michael high from today's episode, though. My heart. My child. So sweet and so sad.
> 
> art related to this chapter: https://68.media.tumblr.com/f3bf5143f93c4981e240694c62d43134/tumblr_ohs008F2781vcr8g5o3_1280.jpg
> 
> arts related to the /next/ chapter :)  
> https://twitter.com/ghostofcrux/status/801380527043293184


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